There are a wide range of instances where a group of individuals are coordinated for an event. Examples of such events can include, but are not limited to, sporting events, convocations, festivals, concerts, business meetings, conferences, charity events, and reunions. Today, in order to set up such events a range of options exist with respect to communication tools including, for example, Simple Messaging Service (SMS), telephone, social media such as Facebook™ messaging services such as Twitter™, email, and web based services such as Google Events.
In the majority of instances these events are based at a particular location (e.g. an office, arena, course, etc.) although in other instances these may be a range of locations (e.g. a charity run requiring volunteers at the start, finish and runner registration) and whilst typically over a generally small geographic area the multiple locations may be over an extended geographic area (e.g. Rio de Janeiro for the Summer Olympics). Accordingly, the number of helpers, volunteers, attendees, support staff, event staff may range from a few to hundreds to thousands.
Within the prior art organizers of such events must factor into their planning missing individuals, commonly known as no-shows. Within the volunteer staffing environment an average of 30% of volunteers do not show up for their assigned shift(s). When this occurs, as indeed can occur within an enterprise with employees being absent, a manager (e.g. an event manager) or a supervisor (e.g. shift supervisor) must scramble to find replacements either for all of the missing individuals or sufficient to ensure execution of the minimum role set for that shift and/or event. Whilst within the prior art the volunteer or staff member may electronically communicate a planned absence to the supervisor/manager, which whilst providing at least a notification at least, does not reduce the requirements to find a replacement. This may be exacerbated by individuals swapping shifts without anyone other than themselves knowing, unforeseen events, and late changes in event logistics.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide supervisors, managers, enterprises, organizers, etc. with the ability to establish communications to individuals or group of individuals rapidly, with low complexity and management overhead, exploiting a software application in execution upon the individual's mobile devices that are connected to wireless networks over varying geographical areas without requiring the supervisors, etc. to have any direct interaction of the individuals. Further, it would be beneficial for the knowledge of the distribution of walkie-talkies etc. as the mobile device is the user's own smartphone or cellphone. Further, it would be beneficial for the supervisors, managers, enterprises, organizers, etc. through the software application of delayed arrival of individual(s) or the incorrect location of individuals.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.